Carlsen Center Innovation Series
Join us from June through September for our startup series supporting early-stage entrepreneurs with tools, frameworks, and mindsets you need to get your startup off the ground. We will explore core elements in starting your business and developing a business model/plan that is evidence-based and ready for funding.
Our series will tackle topics such as:
Blue Ocean Strategy Workshop: Create a Leap in Value for Your Customers
Where to Play: How to Find the Right Market for Your Innovation
EOS® Workshop: Get Alignment with Your Vision and Gain Traction
OKRs: Driving Focus, Alignment, and Engagement with Ben Lamorte
Testing Business Ideas with David Bland
Business Building in Challenging Times (Leanscaleup)
Understand Your Customers: Learn to Apply Jobs to Be Done (JTBD)
Are you looking for a way to create a leap in value for your customers? Are you tired of competing on a low-cost or premium offering basis? Then join us for our 1-hour workshop, Blue Ocean Strategy: Create a Leap in Value for Your Customers, where we will take you through the Blue Ocean Strategy framework as well as tools that will help you visualize your value curve in a new way.
"Blue ocean strategy is the simultaneous pursuit of differentiation and low cost to open up a new market space and create new demand. It is about creating and capturing uncontested market space, thereby making the competition irrelevant. It is based on the view that market boundaries and industry structure are not a given and can be reconstructed by the actions and beliefs of industry players."
- Blue Ocean Strategy Academy
In this workshop led by one of our Entrepreneurs-in-Residence, Dr. Brian Gladden, you will learn about the difference between competing in a Red Ocean vs. creating new market demand through a Blue Ocean. Additionally, you will have the opportunity to learn tools such as the As-Is Canvas and Buyer Utility Map to explore how to create a leap in value for your customers.
Figuring out which market to focus on is one of the biggest and trickiest questions that founders face. How can early-stage founders juggle with different strategic alternatives? How can they compare and prioritize multiple opportunities that seem promising?
To overcome this challenge, we’ve rigorously studied and worked with hundreds of startups to create the Market Opportunity Navigator . This simple and solid framework helps entrepreneurs identify, evaluate and prioritize market opportunities for their business, so they can set their strategic focus and move forward with confidence.
In this talk, I will introduce the structured approach of the Market Opportunity Navigator and its dedicated worksheets, demonstrate the process with a real case study, and present the wealth of supporting materials to help you apply it.
Recommended reading/ viewing
• How to stop playing target market roulette/ Steve Blank
The complementing book Where to Play can be purchased here.
EOS® Workshop: Get Alignment with Your Vision and Gain Traction
Join us for this online workshop on Tue Jul 25 2023 at 12:00:00 pm PST to learn how to align your vision with your business goals and gain traction towards success. This workshop is designed for entrepreneurs, business owners, and leaders who want to take their organization to the next level.
During this interactive workshop, you'll learn the Entrepreneurial Operating System® (EOS®) framework, which is a proven system that helps businesses achieve their goals by providing a clear vision, effective communication, and accountability. You'll also learn how to identify and overcome the obstacles that are holding you back from achieving your vision.
Don't miss this opportunity to gain valuable insights and tools to help you achieve alignment with your vision and gain traction towards success. Register now to secure your spot!
About the Speaker: Joyce Hettrich
Joyce is a Professional EOS® Implementer, Leadership Team Member, Team Developer, Coach, Creative Problem Solver, Facilitator
About the Hettrich Group:
Business Architects, EOS Implementers, CEO Peer Group Leaders, Angel Investors, Board Members. They help CEO's build great companies by working together with the CEO and team with tools and processes that strengthen all areas of the business in order to build the foundation to scale and ultimately grow their valuation. They create accountability for the CEO and Team to stay on track and achieve their Big Hairy Audacious Goals! Focus areas include...differentiated value proposition, segment and market leading strategies, leadership development, organizational development, short, medium and long term plan development, vision and culture development and operational and execution excellence.
We are excited to bring to you during our Summer Startup Series an opportunity to learn from the author of The OKRs Field Book as well as the Founder and President of OKRs.com, Ben Lamorte.
ABOUT THE TALK:
The OKRs Field Book
In this workshop with Ben, you will have the opportunity to learn about the foundations of OKRs (Objectives and Key Results). You will learn the framework and practical application of OKRs to drive focus, alignment, and engagement in your business.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER:
Ben Lamorte, Author of The OKRs Field Book; Founder and President of OKRs.com
Ben Lamorte has more OKRs coaching experience than anyone on the planet. He coaches business leaders focused on defining and making measurable progress on their most important goals. Building off his success helping 100s of managers draft and refine their team’s Objectives and Key Results (OKRs), he founded OKRs.com in 2014. Lamorte has helped over a hundred organizations deploy OKRs including eBay, Adobe, Capital One, Zalando, CareerBuilder, and GoNoodle. In addition to the USA, OKRs.com has clients based in Singapore, Australia, China, Saudi Arabia, Poland, South Africa, France, Germany, Israel, India, Norway, the Netherlands, the UK, and even Canada.
Ben’s first book, Objectives and Key Results: Driving Focus, Alignment, and Engagement with OKRs (co-authored with P. Niven), was published by Wiley in 2016. Ben studied Engineering and Mathematics at University of California, Davis and holds a graduate degree in Management Science & Engineering from Stanford University.
Purchase your own version of the OKRs Field Book before the session
If any special accommodations are needed please let us know at least two weeks in advance to secure the needed accommodations.
We are excited to bring to you during our Summer Startup Series an opportunity to learn from the author of Testing Business Ideas as well as the Founder and CEO of Precoil, David Bland.
ABOUT THE TALK:
Testing Business Ideas
Building on the best selling Strategyzer books, David J Bland and Alex Osterwalder curated a list of experiments for people who are stuck Testing Business Ideas. They identified three major themes from design thinking and applied them to rapid experimentation. Desirability describes whether or not people want the solution. Viability addresses if you can create a sustainable business with the solution. Feasibility dives into the steps to run the infrastructure. In this talk, David will describe the principles behind Testing Business Ideas and facilitate an interactive session on sequencing experiments.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER:
David Bland, CEO and Founder of Precoil
David helps people test business ideas. He’s the co-author of Testing Business Ideas with Alex Osterwalder. David pioneered GE FastWorks with Eric Ries, coached emerging product teams at Adobe and even helped Toyota apply lean startup practices. Before his transition into consulting, David spent over 10 years of his career at technology startups. He stays connected to the startup scene through his work at several Silicon Valley accelerators.
If any special accommodations are needed please let us know at least two weeks in advance to secure the needed accommodations.
Lean Scaleup: Building the Capability to Build New Businesses
Scaling your business can be challenging, but with the right approach, you can achieve sustainable growth. Join us for this workshop where we'll delve into Lean Scaleup methodologies. Discover how to build the necessary capabilities to create and manage multiple new businesses. Gain insights on effective scaling strategies and unlock your startup's true potential.
Quite a few challenges that you must master.
What are your peers doing?
What works, what doesn’t?
What is the best course of action now?
What are the decisive levers for success?
Join us for an interactive 1-hour discussion. “Us” – we are three experts in corporate innovation, all of them Top 10 thought leaders on Thinkers 360:
Frank Mattes, author of two books on corporate new-business building, advisor to corporate innovators and leaders of corporate startups.
Andrew Constable, MBA, FIKE, Innovation and OKR consultant, specialized on generating real business outcomes from innovation in 12 weeks
Brian K. Gladden, DBA, expert on developing innovation capabilities and strategies to create competitive advantage and find unmet customer demand.
What you get (free of charge):
- Actionable insights
- Inspiration and ideas for shaping new-business building in your company
- A place to learn and share
We are excited to bring to you during the Startup Series a workshop with Tony Ulwick, Author of Jobs to Be Done as well as Founder and CEO of Strategyn. During this workshop you will learn how to apply the Jobs to Be Done theory framework to better understand your customer's needs.
Jobs to Be Done: (Described on Strategyn Website)
Jobs-to-be-Done is best defined as a perspective — a lens through which you can observe markets, customers, needs, competitors, and customer segments differently, and by doing so, make innovation far more predictable and profitable.
Theory to Practice takes the theory and the ODI process to the next level. This jobs-to-be-done book reveals:
Why companies fail at innovation and how to avoid the two most critical mistakes that companies make.
How to employ the Jobs-to-be-Done Theory Needs Framework to categorize, define, capture, organize and prioritize customer needs.
The Jobs-to-be-Done Growth Strategy Matrix—a tool that fills in the holes in disruptive innovation theory, and other innovation theories, by examining them through a Jobs lens. It defines and reveals which of the 5 growth strategies to pursue in a given situation.
Improvements to the Outcome-Driven Innovation process—and how the process ties customer-defined metrics to the customer’s Job-to-be-Done, transforming every aspect of opportunity discovery, marketing and innovation.Outcome-Based Segmentation: what is it and how it uncovers hidden opportunities for growth.
The 84 steps associated with the ODI process, revealing in detail what it takes to turn Jobs Theory into practice.
A three-phased approach that a company can use to build a competency in innovation.
The JTBD Language of Innovation – the lexicon of terms needed to establish a common language for innovation.
About Rich Foreman
Rich Foreman is the founder of KidneyLuv which develops solutions for patients with Chronic Kidney Disease Patients (CKD). He is also the COO of IGH Naturals. Previously, as founding CTO, Rich led the team that developed the CordicoShield / CordicoFire Wellness App. Cordico was honored with the Sacramento Innovation Award in 2021. After achieving a 7 digit ARR, Cordico was acquired by Lexipol in 2020. Rich has a BS in Industrial Engineering from the University of Washington, an MPA from Troy State University and was an officer in the U.S. Navy.
Rich co-authored his book, "Tap into the Mobile Economy." Rich's blog was listed in Top 20 Marketing Mobile Blogs of 2014. He has been featured on KCRA3, NEWS10, 1170 Tech AM PowerDrive, Business Radio Money 105.5, SiliconIndia, the Sacramento Business Journal, and the Sacramento Bee. Rich is also the Founding Director of the Sacramento Chapter of Startup Grind and served a term as Utility Commissioner for the City of Folsom. Rich is a regular contributor to TechWire.net and StartupSac.com. Rich was the Co-founder of Apptology which was named Small Business of the Year in 2014 by the Sacramento Asian Pacific Chamber.
